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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25251328">A Clockwork Angel</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lightbringer34/pseuds/Lightbringer34'>Lightbringer34</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Neon Genesis Evangelion</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M, Navel-Gazing, Time Loop, if a God cannot act, what good is he?</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 05:29:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,573</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25251328</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lightbringer34/pseuds/Lightbringer34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Angels exist outside of time, so Kawrou has been here before. Some perspective as he tries once more to save Shinji Ikari.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ikari Shinji/Nagisa Kaworu</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>43</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s hard to be an Angel. The humans look up and see limitless power, vast beings floating above the base earth, with gazes that scorch, cores that heal, and forms beyond sight and comprehension.</p><p>But all the power in the world is worthless when you can’t change what really matters. When you can’t save the people you love, right the wrongs you want to. Whatever force has placed them here, if it is a God, if it even has a capital G,needs to come back. Because he wants answers.</p><p>He’s so tired, so very tired that even the limitless light and grace of his soul is dimmed and flickers like a candle in a storm. He has seen his lover, whose life is always so temporary and tenuous, die once again. This time it’s from a soldier’s bullet. </p><p>He arrived seconds later, scattering the mortals like leaves before a tornado and their blood paints the walls. It is a cold comfort, a messy comfort that really doesn’t help all that much.</p><p>In the beginning, there was the Plan, and he used to keep track. The wrongs he could right, the lives he could save at NERV and elsewhere. But even then, there was just so much suffering, so much he needed to fix, it boggled his mind. But he stored it away, the sins and lives of everyone he ever saw etched into his skin as a list and a reminder. With seven eyes, and seven billion years, he saw quite a bit.</p><p>Time stretched on and on until it stretched around itself and they were back at the beginning once more. He was patient and careful and he worked for twenty-six thousand cycles, time long past human measurement, tweaking, modifying, trying to save who he could when he could from SEELE's wrath or the inevitable Third Impact. </p><p>It never worked. Sometimes he bought the mortals a few more seconds or years of life on the blue ball called Earth, but it never really changed anything.</p><p><em>If you give a clockwork doll power, but it cannot move</em>, he wonders, <em>did you really give it power at all? Or was it just enough to see the strings?</em></p><p>The other Angels do not see the strings, or at least, they do not care. They too go through the steps of the cycle like an accountant checking off a form. From the highest to the lowest, they all have their purpose, their dominion, though there are of course, very few Dominions. </p><p>From Sandalphon to Zeruel to Samshel to Ramiel. Everyone has a place, a point, and a pride in their work. To Tabris, they are clockwork machines, moving through the aeons along their designated tracks. </p><p>He tries so hard to remember, all the way back to the first cycle. It strains even his memory. Were they all once joyful and hateful as the humans were? Did they war and lust and love as Man still does? He’s not sure. He remembers the chattering of millions of voices, the Angels massing as a new flower blooms in the Room of Guf.</p><p>The Earth spins past on its axis far below him, seas now red from lifeblood. Another cycle coming to an end because of Third Impact, so the heat death of the universe comes so fast when you’re not looking for it. For a moment there is utter blackness, the silence before Creation, lacking even void. Then the black is broken with unimaginable violence as heat and light and power explodes outward from one point. The Angels rush forward, each shifting a grain of dust here, lessening the drift of a cloud there. It is a massive undertaking, yet it is something that has been done so many times it’s become a well-organized routine.</p><p>His seven eyes narrow, his six wings burst into new flame, and Tabris clenches his many hands as he sees the Earth spin by, seas already blue, dinosaurs already stomping over ferns down below. </p><p>He takes a step forward when he should step back and the meteor plows into the face of the Earth like a hammer against a face. His feet are bare and they make a slapping noise as he descends, as the Earth’s continents split and shift apart. On his third step the humans have moved out of Africa, are beginning to pray to some nameless deity. Tabris remembers: <em>Kyrrg-Hrrch, born on warm-buggy, will die/is dying/has died in the same cave five years later of infection</em>.</p><p>By steps five and six, humans have cultivated death, civilization, guns, and the smallpox virus. Now he is very close. If he had a mouth, which he does not, Tabris would grin. Instead he breaths in void and exhales stardust that, in 12,000 years, will become the planet Isstvan past the Kuiper Belt. One last moment to take it all in, to revel in the stillness of the universe before he tries once more.</p><p>He alone can see the strings, and he alone will break them. One last step.</p><p>Tabris opens red eyes, pushes himself off off the grass with two skinny arms, five porcelain fingers each. He opens a small mouth and smiles with white teeth. He runs his fingers (five) through his hair (white).</p><p>
  <em>It will be a pleasure to meet you again, Ikari Shinji. </em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Tabris, the Last</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Tabris, aka Kawrou Nagisa, has some more thoughts about existence as the Angels time loop again and again.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Why yes, I can be enormously pretentious, thanks for asking.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Doctor Akagi and Gendo Ikari, as well as numerous members of SEELE merely view the Angels as a necessary inconvenience. A roadblock on the path to Instrumentality to be overcome with the Evangelions. For they have the Dead Sea Scrolls, which provides clues to  when each Angel will arrive and what form it will take. After all, even Angels must follow the harsh law of Time. They are wrong.</p><p>The Angels do not come because it was foretold, rather it was fortold because they came. The Room of Guf, a place beyond time and linear space is where the Angels reside and to move through time is as moving through the rooms of an empty house. But they follow the cycle anyway. How does one fill an eternity, after all?</p><p>Sachiel, Shamshiel, Ramiel, Ghagiel, Israfael, Sandalphon, Materiel, on and on and on. After all, the Godhead must be tested, to see if he is deemed worthy. And so the Angels come to Tokyo-3, the birthplace and one true home of Shinji Ikari. They are clothed in flesh, light, crystal, and a thousand other particulates, shaping their form to their task. And when their cores are destroyed, when their physical forms explode in pillars of light and heat and fury, the Angels return to the Room of Guf until the next cycle. All save one.</p><p>A Classical Biblical scholar, or a reader of Milton might say that the Seventeenth Angel fell or rebelled when the truth was nothing of the sort. He merely decided to attempt a different method. True, the other Angels would change cycle to cycle. Bardiel might spare his captive pilot or not. Zeruel would destroy NERV and the bridge crew, or he might not. Sachiel might kill Shinji Ikari, out of sheer curiosity. But Tabris, being the Angel of Free Will, decided to leverage his title as much as he could. </p><p>And so he traveled the cycles, maneuvered countless timelines in hopes that Shinji Ikari would not have to shoulder the burden of the world’s sins. For he knew it would break the boy. And every time he was correct. Shinji broke in a myriad of ways. Sometimes the Third Child refused to accept responsibility,refused to kill him and the world ended. Sometimes he took responsibility and the world ended anyway. But Kawrou still treasured the time he had with the boy, so uncertain, so imperfect, so representative of humanity with all its flaws. </p><p>Watching a lake at sunset. Playing the piano. Piloting an Evangelion. In the beginning, he was arrogant. He thought that for a being as old and as powerful as Tabris, saving Shinji Ikari would be easy. That understanding humans would be easy. But time has made him wise. He sees truths and contradictions at every turn and wonders at a world that has such people in it. And now he sees why the cycle is necessary.</p><p>It is like the Flood, from long ago, when the Angels first came to earth, when Man grew proud and turned to evil. For there to be a new world, a better world, there must be fresh earth to plant in. Free of the taint and memory of the old world. And this time, the instrument of cleansing will be the boy. And it is by his choice that humanity will move forward into a new age or strive to reclaim the comfort and security of old.</p><p>Within the Evangelion cages, Kawrou Nagisa sighs and runs a hand through his white, wavy hair. It is Shinji’s choice, not his. And as much as he might want to, he cannot take that choice away. Because even as the coming hours will destroy him, Instrumentality will offer him a chance to be born again. Kawrou hopes he’ll be there to see it.</p><p>He turns to the red behemoth in front of him. “Rise, Adam’s false shadow and servant of the Lillim!” And as Kawrou, now Tabris, steps off the platform, he hopes in spite of himself. He hopes Shinji will one day make all this suffering worth something in the end.</p>
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